[Foundation-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening

[Lars Aronsson]

Geoffrey Plourde wrote:

> That might be a hell of a incentive to change. Before we talk 
> about getting out the torches, I think we should see if we can 
> make Commons functional. The incentive of being shuttered makes 
> it more relevant to those who are in denial. I have made two 
> suggestions on improvements. One is a training program with 
> specific handling, i.e. no more we delete in 7 days, a different 
> template that is more collegial. The second is to cross appoint 
> administrators from underrepresented projects who agree to 
> undergo a boot camp program. Thoughts?

Maybe we are too fast to discuss solutions now, when we should 
first discuss the problem.  I brought this up on commons-l before 
it spread to foundation-l.  With the risk of making myself a 
target for "tl;dr" (too long; didn't read), here's the problem 
that I see:

Wikipedia in many languages is at a stage where the basic articles 
are written (apple is a fruit, Paris is the capital of France) and 
we need to recruit more people who know more areas, both academics 
and people who lived through the politics of the 1960s.  This 
includes events such as Wikipedia Academy and also courses for the 
elderly.  We can't hope that these people are skilled in PHP 
programming or fluent in English, as many people are on this list. 
Some might be able to write good text, but not used to wiki 
markup, and completely disabled in wiki template design.  Perhaps 
they should stick to scanning and uploading their old photos from 
the 1970s.

We still have all kinds of vandalism on Wikipedia.  If patrolling 
is efficient and finds and reverts 95% of vandalism, it might also 
spill over to falsely "fighting" 1% of beginner contributions.  
We're scaring serious people away by our own mistake.  This is 
where we need to improve.  It's like having a zero tolerance on 
crime, without becoming a brutal fascist state. Within each 
(small/medium) language of Wikipedia, this is quite easy.  We all 
speak the same language and we know each other.

But as soon as it comes to image uploading, an area where the 
elderly have decades of photos to contribute, we're sending our 
beginners off to Wikimedia Commons.  Even if the menues and most 
templates are localized in every major language, this is not true 
of the admin community there. If a beginner fails to fill out all 
details of free licensing, their user talk page will receive an 
image deletion request in English. Even if there is a translated 
version of that notification, the user's explanation in a local 
language might not be understood by the admins.  If the user has 
good credentials that are easily verified (retired schoolteacher, 
museum manager, ...) and has built a solid reputation in the local 
language Wikipedia, a Commons admin from another language might 
not fully understand this.

Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has 
infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two.  So many 
copyright violations and half-free images are deleted, that little 
attention is paid to the individual contributors. The focus is on 
the image, not on the user. This system is also an open target for 
abuse. Sometimes deletions are requested anonymously or without 
substantial reasons, but this is not preceived as a problem. Only 
copyright violations are preceived as a problem.  Wikimedia 
Commons might have a shortage of admins and other problems, that 
need to be sorted out.  But that's not my main issue.

My main issue is this: If we invest in recruiting newcomers and in 
fostering our local admin community to receive and greet 
newcomers, how can we get the best value from that investment?  
Sending our beginners away to Wikimedia Commons and a whole new 
set of foreign language admins doesn't seem optimal.  That's like 
pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom.

Either we should send newcomers and admins in pairs to Commons, 
somehow stating that this new user account is a Swedish speaker 
and that Swedish speaking admins can take care of any issues, or 
we should allow local uploads again, so the newcomers can stay 
within the Swedish Wikipedia.  After images have been patrolled 
locally, they can be forwarded to Commons by a system of bots, and 
only the bot operators would have to deal with the international 
admin community at Wikimedia Commons.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se